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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22363843">patchwork memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Poetry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 10:43:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>736</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22363843</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>trying to find your way through the memories is like this;</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>patchwork memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>it's all so familiar but unreachable, isn't it?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Did I even have a life before now?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If I did, I can't remember most of it</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Trying to look back at those years is like trying to see through a haze of age blinded eyes </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(are we really that old already? how could that be?)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It's like a maze that I have to venture through, surrounding walls are all thorns and pain. What do I get when I finally find my way out? </span>
  <em>
    <span>(Is there even an end to this winding puzzle or am I just carrying on until my body gives out?)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I can cheat my way to the fractured memories, shove through the gnarled vines with razor sharp edges that rip into my skin </span>
  <em>
    <span>(but I'm used to that now, the scars they leave are only skin deep.) </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Superficial marks only bleed for a short amount of time and the reward at the end- when my hands close around that memory that's so vague, one that disintegrates and slips through my fingers like sand in an hourglass…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It's worth that pain, isn't it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They're snippets of my past. Unfathomable, nearly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If I try, close my eyes and hold my breath and REACH… I can </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost</span>
  </em>
  <span> grasp it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They're fleeting. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How do I take ahold of something that's hardly tangible? I can't hold to it with trembling fingers and I can't grasp it gingerly between my teeth or a quivering jaw, I can't trap it in my brain so why go through all that effort for only a second of remembrance?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It's worth that pain, isn't it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How many times do I have to find myself like this? Collapsed on my knees in another dead end of this maze, fragments of my mind disappearing before my eyes after I worked so tirelessly to touch them, fresh marks from the mass of thorns cross-hatching over the old pale lines across the expanse of my skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It's worth that pain, isn't it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span> Because there was a time before this, there had to have been. People aren't just shoved into existence at a random age, forced to learn themselves </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(who are we?)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>without the past to help them find that person they're supposed to become</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(is there anyone for me to be or am i just biding my time?)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It's better to look forward now, there's nothing to look back on and as scary as that is, maybe it's locked away for a reason and you know all of these fears have stories behind them but maybe… </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe</span>
  </em>
  <span> it's better off being stored in the recesses of your mind because remembering only hurts and you know that by looking down at the scars on your body, scars that have nothing behind them because you forgot what you were working for the second you made contact with it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe</span>
  </em>
  <span> it's better to let those nightmares stay nightmares, leave them in your subconscious where they can only hurt you when the REM cycles unlock parts of you that you don't even know exist and it's almost… </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost</span>
  </em>
  <span> a good thing when that starts to fade away with the rising sun because that lapse in memory quells your fears and you can function, even if just barely because if living isn't manageable, well… functioning is close enough, isn't it?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It's worth that pain, isn't it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I keep asking myself the same question but how am I supposed to give an answer to that voice in my head </span>
  <em>
    <span>(another version of me, he's still so scared </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>((of what?))</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> (and there's no way to alleviate that terror if I can't put a name to the source of it)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How am I supposed to answer that question if I can't put a name to the source of my fear because trying to look at it is like trying to look directly at the fucking sun </span>
  <em>
    <span>(it's too bright, too bright, too much, leaves me with blindspots in my metaphorical vision for days to follow)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe it's not worth the pain.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They're right when they say ignorance is bliss and I should've just left it at that but I had to go digging and now I'm in a place that's almost familiar and I want to go home but did I ever have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>home</span>
  </em>
  <span> to begin with?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Don't go looking for answers because you can't handle the truth, you're weak and look, now, at what you've left behind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It wasn't worth the pain</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading (:</p></blockquote></div></div>
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